Anttenna – like Twitter, Foursquare and Craigslist

If you’ve been to Craigslist, you know that one of its best features is that different cities or states are identified so you can access goods or services in that region. Now imagine Twitter, with it’s 140 character limit, and the hundreds or thousands of followers; all looking at each other or at least that is the theory. But what if you could break down your Twitter followers by region so that in some ways it was like Craigslist. Well that is what Anttenna is trying to do.

The Anttenna service, which is in limited locations like Seattle, San Diego, Las Vegas and Austin is a free iPhone app. It is like Craigslist, Foursquare, and Twitter all rolled into one. The business goal is to create a new form of classified advertising, something like “mobile microlistings” that are targeted to a user’s location.

Anttenna in Action

For example, if you are looking for tickets for a sporting event in your city, use the app to communicate with other local users of the app, to buy the tickets.

Like Twitter, the listings through Anttenna are limited to 140 characters. The company has designed the program service to follow Twitter. Complete strangers who are not following one another on the social networking site can interact with one another in order to facilitate a deal. This is called “Anttweeting.”

Anttenna Examples

The company plans to make money through a premium subscription service in which “power sellers” are able to predetermine the times that they want listings to automatically appear in the Anttenna marketplace.

The basic plan is free, followed by a mid-tier offering of $15 per month, and a higher-tier set costing $25 per month. Other pay systems are being looked at like a system similar to eBay, or a paid listing service where users could pay an extra fee to highlight their listing within the app.

The small number of locations using the service is is few todate. The went live in San Diego a few weeks ago and launched in Seattle last week; the company is targeting a larger nationwide push in early May.